


Kicking Against the Pricks

by MrProphet



Category: Fantastic Four
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 16:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10700670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Kicking Against the Pricks

Sue stumbled and fell, releasing her daughter rather than drag her down with her.

“Are you alright, Mom?” Valeria asked.

“Yes, sweetheart. We just need to keep moving; just need to get over the mountains.”

“You’re exhausted, mother,” the girl insisted. “Ben can carry you.”

Ben lumbered closer, but Sue waved him away and forced herself up. “I can manage,” she said. “I  _have_  to manage. Ben, you need to keep watching our backs, just like Johnny needs to stay overhead. If it comes to it, I can hide while you take Valeria on.”

“Aw, come on, Sue,” Ben protested. “We ain’t gonna leave you here.”

“ _She_  is the important one,” Sue insisted. “You get her through and she can stop him; you know that. Anyway, he won’t hurt me.”

“You don’t know  _that_ ,” Ben insisted.

Johnny swooped down on a plume of fire. “Pick it up, guys!” he called. “You’ve picked up four striders, closing in fast.”

“Can you put them off?” Sue gasped.

“I’ll try,” Johnny replied, “but you know he made those things fireproof. Ben; I could use a big, stony hand.”

“On it,” Ben sighed. “Sue; get Valeria through.”

“I will; whatever happens.” She grabbed her daughter by the hand and pulled her along the path. “Come on, Val.”

“Yes, mother,” Valeria replied, with a single regretful glance at Ben and Johnny as they made their way down the mountainside to protect her escape. “I don’t like this.”

“I know; but you’re the only one smart enough to stop him and you can’t do it yet,” Sue reminded her. “You have to get through, even if…”

“Don’t say it, Mom,” Valeria insisted. “We’ll both make it or neither of us…”

Sue lifted her hand and threw up a force field to block a sudden blast of flame.

Valeria looked around, seeking in vain to find the source of the attack. “Mom?”

“It’s him,” Sue said, staring fixedly at a single point. “You may have worked out how to mimic my power, but I can still see right through you. Or… you know what I mean.”

“Of course.” With a slight shimmer, their enemy dropped his invisibility and hung in the air before them, armour gleaming.

“I’m flattered you turned out in person,” Sue told him.

“Don’t be,” he replied in his hard voice. “It’s only the girl I came for.”

“I guessed that when you tried to kill me. But you won’t take her.”

“No?” He held out his hand and pain flared along Sue’s extended arm. “Invisible shield, invisible laser. I didn’t just analyse your powers so that I could replicate them…”

With the last of her energy, Sue thrust out a force bolt, powerful enough to punch through plate steel. It was a killing blast, but he laughed it off.

“…I did it so I could negate them,” he finished. “I always knew you were dangerous, Sue. “Well, now so am I.”

“Is that what all off this is about?” Sue demanded. She slumped and her eight-year-old daughter caught her weight. “The battle armour, the legion, the robots. Is it all about  _jealousy_.”

“What have I to be jealous of?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sue replied, “but I  _do_  know that in all that armour, surrounded by all that technology and all of those simulated abilities, the one power you can’t use is your own.”

With a roar, he flung out his hand and cast a blast of flame at Sue. She was too tired to muster a defence, but the flames flared across an unseen shield nevertheless. The air shimmered as a volley of those invisible laser blasts hit that shield.

“You are not the only one who learns from the powers of others!” A second armoured figure swooped down. “That is why I never let you close enough to study mine.”

“You have no powers!” he scoffed.

“I have my magic, Richards!” Dr Victor von Doom declared. “Something you will never understand.”

“I don’t have to!” Reed Richards flung out an arm and a force bolt smashed through Doom’s iron face mask. The cloaked form spiralled to the ground in spray of metal.

“And my robotic genius.” Now von Doom’s voice came from another Doombot, and four more followed it out of the mountains. “And you crossed into Latveria a mile and a half ago. The rest of the world may belong to Fantastic, but this is Doom’s country and you will  _leave now_!”

For a moment, Reed looked as though he might make a fight of it, then he turned and fled, disappearing into thin air as he flew.

One of the Dooms touched down next to Sue and Valeria. He held out a hand. “Susan; are you alright?”

Sue nodded. “Johnny… and Ben…”

“Some of my Doombots are helping to finish the last of Richards’ striders,” Doom assured her. “There is nothing else close by; he must have counted on a small force catching you before you crossed the border. Luckily for you, my forces succeeded in extending the border just last week.”

“I came to bring Valeria,” Sue explained. “She’s the only one who’s smart enough to stop him, but she needs your help.”

Doom nodded. After a moment, he reached up and removed his mask, turning so that only the child could see beneath the hood. “Valeria, my dear,” he said. “Welcome to Latveria.”

Valeria reached up and touched the horribly scarred face. “You’re very handsome,” she said.

“Am I?”

“You are… in the same way that my father is ugly.”

Doom nodded, apparently satisfied with this answer. He replaced the mask and stood up straight. “Come! My palace awaits. Together, we shall end the reign of the tyrant, Fantastic, and usher in a new age of glory!”

Sue let Valeria go on ahead with von Doom. The girl seemed naturally to trust the armoured magician, and for his part, Doom had never seemed more human. Yet he was not only almost as brilliant as Reed Richards, he was almost as ambitious. Was she doing the right thing?

Shaking her head, Sue Storm followed her daughter into the Latverian mountains. Right or wrong, there was nothing else to do. Mr Fantastic had to be stopped.


End file.
